A Fate Worse Than
by murdock
Summary: So,what really IS the worst way to go? SG-1 ponders...


Author's Notes:  It should be said that I am obsessed with death.  I love a good death scene.  My siblings, Tsa the Incomparable and the Mad Wanton Overlord, find this odd, and a little disturbing.  Nevertheless, they enjoy a good mock, and tease me about it whenever possible.  I have earned the nickname "the death ho".  (Did I mention that I invariably cry at the longed-for death scenes?  I'm a wreck.)

So, of course, we were talking about horrible ways to die, and this fic came about.  SG-1 dies very well, IMHO.  I started to write this before I saw the episode where Marduke buys it in the sarcophagus, and Jack deems that the worst way to go (if you haven't seen it, I wont ruin it for you).  Also, sometime before Daniel ascends.  It's just for fun.  

Standard disclaimers apply:  I'm just a hack, and they're not mine, alas.

***

The wormhole opened with its predictable gust and shiver, and SG-1 strode up the ramp towards the event horizon.  A yard away from the Gate, the members fell into step, four abreast.

"Wow," Jack thought, "and we've never even practiced that."

Exiting on the far side with a decidedly proud swagger, he strolled down the ramp with his team.  The MALP sat a few yards ahead of them, a bright metal anomaly in the dusty landscape.  It, and the Stargate were the only visible space age technology. 

Jack frowned.  "Kinda quiet planet, huh?  Why are we here again?"

"Naquada, Jack," answered Daniel tersely.  "The briefing was only five hours ago."

"Yeah, yeah," he mumbled.  "So, where are we supposed to find it in this," he waved his P90 as he scrounged for an appropriate description, "barren, yet welcoming, wasteland?"

Fiddling with a small electronic doohickey, Carter said, "Sir, the unmanned flyovers indicated there were once active mines in the vicinity of the Stargate.  They've been abandoned, but there's still enough Naquada to make this planet worth investigating."

Daniel jumped right in.  "And there were some interesting runes that might explain how this civilization utilized the Naquada.  If my translations are correct, they were able to refine it to a very high degree, as well as incorporating it into their religious services."

"Oh, really?" asked Carter brightly, summoning far more enthusiasm than Jack thought strictly necessary for Daniel's announcement.  

"As a matter of fact," Daniel took a deep breath, and Jack felt his brain cells cringe in horror.

"Whoa, there," he interrupted before they got carried away, "You two lead the way to these ruined mines or whatever.  Teal'c and I will fan out on your six."

Carter and Daniel were already some distance away, happily discussing Munsell tests and other incomprehensible arcana, leaving the others to stare after them.

"Dork soul mates," Jack muttered to Teal'c as the scientific types wandered off. "Donnit just make ya chuck yer Froot Loops?"

            ***

Six hours later, a sweaty and bedraggled SG-1 returned to the Stargate.  Although Sam and Daniel fairly glowed with success and intellectual stimulation, Jack was ready to stab himself in the foot if it would get them out of here any faster.  And although Teal'c had no discernable expression on his face, Jack was positive he felt the same.  "Daniel, would you do the honors please, and get us off this godforsaken rock?"

            Daniel glanced up from his notes, a vague look on his face; the look that made Jack think of the near-sighted mole in _The Wind in the Willows_.  He frowned questioningly at Jack, who gestured impatiently towards the DHD.  "Oh. Right," he mumbled. Jack rolled his eyes.

            He checked over his shoulder to make sure his other brainiac would be able to find the big circle of light when it opened up.  Sam smiled happily at him from her doohickey, but her face abruptly creased with concern.  Jack's answering smile fell into a grimace, and he looked back to the Stargate.

            "Uh, Jack?  I think something's wrong.  The GDO-"

            "Dammit, Daniel, how many times have I told you: first you dial, THEN you go through!"  Jack's tirade was interrupted by an incoming message from the SGC.  Sam hustled over to the MALP while Jack and Daniel continued snipping at each other.

            "I know perfectly well how to work the gate, Jack."

            "Then why is it that it only breaks when you dial?"

            "Sam broke one once!"

            "Ah ha! So you admit it! You did break it!"

            "Sir, Daniel," Carter interrupted flatly, "nobody broke anything.  There's a problem with the GDO software on the SGC mainframe, and the iris isn't responding the signal."

            "Great."  Jack ignored Daniel's superior smirk.

            "Sergeant Siler is working on it.  SGC is going to radio us again in one hour.

            "Like I said, great."

*** 

            Sam and Daniel passed the time in what was no doubt considered sparkling conversation amongst the geek crowd.  Jack cleaned his nails with his knife, and fought the urge to throw pebbles at them.  Teal'c sat stoically.  Jack thought he had finally mastered the art of kel-no-reeming with his eyes open.  

By Jack's watch, it was exactly sixty-three minutes later that the MALP beeped.  "Finally," he groaned.

              Everyone perked up, and watched Sam's side of the conversation.  She nodded and made concerned, understanding faces for a few minutes, and then signed off.  Jack waited patiently for a nanosecond, and then strode over to demanded information.

"So, what's the poop, Carter?  Are we being left here to rot?"

Futzing with the MALP, Carter said shortly, "Colonel, General Hammond said it would only take another couple of hours to recheck the system, and run some tests.  We won't have time to die, much less rot."

"Unless it's of boredom," Jack gagged.  Carter frowned slightly at this, and turned her attention back to the MALP.

"I suppose there are worse ways to die. Not that we are, of course, I'm just saying," he added after a quick look at Carter.  Jack threw himself dejectedly down beside Teal'c.

"Indeed," intoned Teal'c.  "I once observed Apophis entomb a living man in a sarcophagus filled with flesh-eating scarab beetles."

From either side of the stairs, Carter and Daniel shot aghast looks at the Jaffa.

"You old faker.  That was _The Mummy_!" Jack protested.

Teal'c shrugged unconcernedly, and retained his inscrutable look.  

After a minute, Daniel shut his ever-present journal and wandered over to sit beside Jack.  "I've always had a thing about dying in a fire," he said after a minute.

"You'd die of smoke inhalation first, Daniel."  Jack thumped him on the back in less than reassuring way.  "They say drowning is a fairly peaceful way to go."

"Or something like carbon monoxide poisoning, where you just fall asleep," shuddered Daniel. 

"Excessive zatn'kitel fire," offered Teal'c.  

The men stared at him.  "It only hurts for a moment," he said calmly, raising an eyebrow as if daring someone to disagree with him.

"Someone's been spending his down time with Doc Frasier."  Jack mumbled.  "That's what she says about needles."

Carter left the MALP, and dropped to the ground beside Teal'c.  She volunteered, "Knife in the gut. Oh, or an aneurysm!"

"Are we trying to find the most or least painful?"  Daniel asked, momentarily confused.

"Garroting", said Jack, before spouting, "Massive subdural hematoma! They lose more hockey players that way."

"Dismemberment," came Teal'c's sepulchral voice.   Everyone winced.

"Lead poisoning.  First you go mad, then you die, like Mozart," said Carter. 

"Hemlock, like Socrates."  Daniel got back into the spirit of the thing.

"Trapped in your own beard like the man in the iron mask," Jack said.  "What?  I can be literary when I feel like it," he said in response to Sam and Daniel's surprised looks.  "Oh, for crying out loud.  Suffocation."

"Overeating," Daniel continued.

"Ruptured bladder," said Carter.

"Dragged apart by undomesticated equines," finished Teal'c.

They quickly began again:

"Eaten by cannibals."

"Eaten by sharks."

"Crocodiles!"

"Bunnies."

There was a moment of contemplative silence.

"Bunnies, big guy?"

Teal'c gave Jack the hairy eyeball.  "Bunnies are efficient nibblers, O'Neill."  This apparently was all that needed to be said.

Jack looked sideways at the rest of his team, asking them "Do we really want to know?"  with just a look.

After a unanimous vote of NO, communicated by furious head shaking and wide eyes, he continued bravely on.

"Okay.  How about trampled by a herd of elephants?"

"Squashed between two rocks."

"Gored by a bull."

"Strapped down in the desert and left for vultures."

"Hung by the neck."

"Chain saw to the femoral artery."

"Childbirth."  

A chorus of boo's from the men greeted this entry.  "Darn it, Carter.  Play fair!"

Carter shot an amused look at her teammates.  "Can't top that one, can you?"  She thought for a minute.  "All right.  Crucifixion."

"Good one", mumbled Daniel appreciatively.

"The classics never go out of style," agreed Teal'c with a nod.

"You guys are weird," Jack commented.  "I think being tied to an Acme rocket and crashing into a mountain has a certain _je ne sais quoi_."

Everyone laughed at this, and then spent ten minutes explaining the manifesto of frustrated genius Wyl E. Coyote to Teal'c.

"Avada kedavra!" Sam burst out suddenly, face glowing.

Daniel almost choked trying to get out "Cruciatus!" a second later.  

Jack and Teal'c wore identical nonplussed yet indulgent looks as the resident geniuses laughed their collective six-figure IQ down to double-digit numbers.

Sam sputtered, "Voldemort is so obviously a Goa'uld!"

Daniel, already red, started to turn purple and leak tears.  Teal'c thumped him mercilessly on the back until he gasped to a stop. 

"Heimlich maneuver performed by a Jaffa," he wheezed.  Sam almost went off again, but clutched her sore sides and just giggled painfully.

"ANYway," Jack said, losing patience with the joke he couldn't understand.  "How about spontaneous combustion?"

"Virgin sacrifice to the volcano gods!"   

"Murdered by pirates is good."

"Tied to a garden gnome and thrown into a pool!"

"Covered in honey and eaten by termites. Or pigs!"

"A Komodo dragon!"

Daniel and Sam were snickering again.  Jack decided to show some leadership initiative and nip this in the bud.  "Teal'c, please suggest a nice NORMAL death, before these two get carried away again."

The Jaffa pondered momentarily. "May I suggest the bubonic plague?"

"Always a winner." Jack graciously accepted the entry.

            "Does this strike anyone else as morbid?" asked Sam suddenly, "I mean, sitting here talking about horrible ways to die when we've seen so much death?"

            "It's cathartic," Daniel said.  "Believe me."

            "Well, you would know," agreed Jack.  "You have more lives than a cat."

            "But he's never really been dead, sir.  Oh, wait, except for that time when we all were, and we met the Nox, or when we just thought he was dead, but he really wasn't. And then that time on the Goa'uld ship, when he found the sarcophagus in the nick of time. And, jeez, Daniel."

            Daniel shrugged modestly.

Jack grunted.  "All I hope is that I go quickly.  No circling the drain for me."

Daniel cocked an eyebrow at this.  "And you call yourself an opera buff.  I never saw anyone die in less than ten minutes on stage, belting their hearts out as they died of TB, or something else just as unlikely."

"It's fine for others, just not for me.  Make it quick.  And, preferably, painless.  While I'm fishing, mebbe."

"Major Carter has often told me that fishing would probably cause her immense brain damage, O'Neill."

            "Oh, really?"  Jack said archly.  "Your loss, Carter."

            The MALP beeped suddenly, and Carter jumped up to check it.  "That must be General Hammond," she muttered under her breath as she hurried away, "thank god." 

            "How can you not like fishing?" Jack asked Teal'c and Daniel.  

            "I assume that's a rhetorical question," Daniel said.

            Jack's heated response was precluded by Sam's return.  "Okay, sir.  SGC says everything is fixed, and we have a go to return."  

            "They're sure?"

            "Yes, sir."

            Jack stood, and pointed an admonishing finger at Carter.

"Well, I hope they're right, cause I just thought of the WORST way to go."

Sam and Daniel winced in unison as Jack slapped his hands together and said "SPLAT!"  Teal'c merely levered his eyebrows around his tattoo.

"Hitting the iris?" Daniel guessed. 

"Yep."

"Ow, sir."

"Yep."

"I have complete faith in the ability of the Stargate Command to restore the computer systems to perfect working order," offered Teal'c.

"Well, if it's good enough for Teal'c, it's good enough for me," voted Jack.  "Alright campers, head 'em up and move 'em out."

SG-1 gathered their packs and equipment, and headed up to the gate.  Somehow, everyone reached the last step together, and paused before hitting the event horizon. 

"Surely, it's fixed," said Daniel hesitantly. 

"Oh, yeah," said Sam comfortingly, "Siler's pretty good at this type of thing."  

No one moved.

"Let's go, kids," Jack prodded.  "Some of us have goldfish to feed tonight."

As a whole, SG-1 took the last step, four abreast.

"Cool," Jack thought as he hit the horizon, "twice in one day.  I wonder if we can get a medal for that."


End file.
